The Transformation of Legal Studies toward Artificial Intelligence (TEDIA) project is the winner of the "Emergents 2024" call for projects from the IdEx Formation program atUniversité Grenoble Alpes. This project aims to raise awareness and train as many students as possible from the Faculty of Law (through the creation of a course on operational legal AI) as well as various legal professionals in the uses of artificial intelligence (AI).
In 2023, the issue of the impact of new AI tools in the field of law received widespread media coverage when the developers of ChatGPT-4 announced that this AI had passed the New York bar exam with a score close to that of the top candidates. This result was made possible by the development of generative AI and the proliferation of conversational agents (ChatGPT) specializing in the legal field.
According to a survey by legal publisher LexisNexis on generative AI and its impact on the transformation of the legal profession, published in October 2023, "Although the use of generative AI in the legal field remains relatively modest across all legal professions (19%), nearly half of legal professionals (49%) already use it or plan to do so. " Without claiming to replace humans, these tools are presented as essential for all legal professionals of tomorrow, enabling, among other things, significant productivity gains.
Today, we are seeing a proliferation of LegalTech companies in the legal field, with nearly fifteen now in existence: Case Law Analytics (LexisNexis); GenIA-L (Dalloz); Ordalie; Predictice (Assistant); Legal Quantum; GoodLegal; LegiGPT; JurisAsk; Doctrine IA...; not to mention generalist generative AI, some of which are developing specialized legal modules (Chat GPT, Mistral AI, etc.).
It is within this context that the TEDIA project was conceived. This new project aims, on the one hand, to train students in the operational tools of legal AI and their use in various legal professions. On the other hand, it aims to develop critical and forward-looking scientific thinking about these AI tools, in order to contribute to the development of public and educational knowledge of legal and operational AI. The aim is to train the lawyers of tomorrow, who will need to meet the professional standards expected by professionals.
Today, there are two major obstacles to this necessary adaptation.
The first obstacle concerns the lack of knowledge and training regarding the use, functionality, and impact of these tools in the legal field. Students sometimes use freely available AI tools, but without understanding how they work, how to write prompts, or the risks of errors or hallucinations. Furthermore, as legal AI tools are new and constantly evolving, law teachers are not necessarily familiar with all their features, so it also seems necessary to train them in their use, particularly with a view to potentially adapting teaching methods for monitoring and assessing students. AI does indeed present risks from an educational perspective, in terms of plagiarism or failure to cite sources, for example.
The second obstacle lies in accessing these tools. Not all of them are available to students or teachers: only access to traditional digital databases, such as institutional websites (Légifrance, Ariane) and the platforms of leading publishers (LexisNexis, Dalloz, Lexbase) is available, without access to these publishers' AI software. Most of these generative AI tools and high-performance conversational agents are only accessible via subscription.
As part of this project, several tasks are planned in order to address these obstacles:
Course on legal AI
Starting in September 2025, the Grenoble Law School will offer a course entitled "Legal Artificial Intelligence" for law students in their second year during the first semester of 2025/2026 (optional course).
This practical and theoretical course will provide an introduction to operational legal AI for a wide audience, preparing them for the transformation of various legal professions.
This course will cover the legal aspects of AI, but will focus primarily on the theory and practice of operational AI, in the form of hybrid classes. Students will learn how to use the aforementioned software and develop their thinking on its use and impact on various legal professions. This course will provide an overview of the various aspects of AI in the field of law.
These courses will be taught by the project leaders, Ms. Géraldine Vial and Mr. Romain Rambaud. They may also call upon guest speakers. From this perspective, one of the unique features of the TEDIA project is that it combines private law (Ms. Vial) and public law (Mr. Rambaud) in the same course.
IA Week: the first week of operational legal artificial intelligence in France
As part of this project, a week dedicated to operational legal AI will be organized from September 17 to 19, 2025, at the Grenoble Law School. This AI Week will include academic conferences addressing the following topics through plenary lectures:
- AI and the law: general contemporary developments
- AI and jurisdictions (either judicial or public)
- AI computer techniques applied to law
- Users of operational legal AI (i.e., court officials or administrative staff)
- Ethics, regulation, and security of AI
These conferences will be led by experts in legal AI, who will honor us by sharing their opinions and experiences in their chosen fields with participants.
In addition, this week will feature practical training workshops led by various LegalTech companies. These companies will hold workshops that will give participants hands-on experience with AI tools and demonstrate their general-purpose and specialized AI systems to help participants better understand them.
The participants who will be in the spotlight are students, teachers, and various legal professionals such as lawyers, magistrates, notaries, bailiffs, corporate lawyers, administrators, and lawyers working for the state and local authorities. They will be able to attend the various LegalTech workshops to learn about operational legal AI and how to use AI in their respective fields.
Our partners
We would like to thank our valued partners for their essential collaboration in the success of this project:
- IdEx Formation atUniversité Grenoble Alpes is a major player in the field of innovation and development. It enhances the quality of the courses offered byUniversité Grenoble Alpes supports innovative teaching and learning practices and interdisciplinary study programs.
- MIAI Cluster (Interdisciplinary Institute for Artificial Intelligence) atUniversité Grenoble Alpes, which is a dynamic network of technology experts whose goal is to create an international institute of reference in Grenoble for embedded, interactive, and generative AI that serves humans and the environment, with an emphasis on frugality, reliability, and a desire to educate citizens and decision-makers about the challenges of artificial intelligence.
- The Grenoble Legal Research Center (CRJ) is structured around three main areas of research (Justice and Freedom / Innovation / Public Action and Territories) but also develops cross-disciplinary scientific projects.
Read more
Research project by Géraldine Vial ( file: "Exploring and anticipating judges' reasoning with artificial intelligence"):
Research project by Romain Rambaud ( project "Algorithmic Justice in Elections" - JADE):
Legal Research Center:
Contact
For any questions regarding the TEDIA project, please contact the following individuals:
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